Posts tagged with breathing

There are thousands of things to worry about every day. It’s easy to get caught up in the stresses of the day and let them build up until you have an anxiety attack. Going around in a constant state of anxiety can prevent you from taking part in your life.

Instead of waiting until you have an anxiety attack, there are many techniques you can use to manage your anxiety and prevent it from getting out of hand.

The best thing you can do is practice mindfulness and incorporate calmness into all parts of your life. After all, it’s much easier to prevent anxiety attacks from happening than it is to calm down from them.

Here are some techniques that will help you stay calm when you incorporate them into your daily routine.

There are many ways you can add deep breathing to your daily routine. Find something that works for you. If you need someone to walk you through a meditation, there are thousands of guided meditations online that range from a few minutes to a few hours. Or, if you feel like you don’t have much time during the day, you can sneak some breathing into your routine. Practice 5-10 deep breaths right as you’re waking up, or as you are trying to fall asleep. Even if you can only focus on your breath for a few minutes a day, your anxiety levels will become more manageable as you include purposeful breathing in your routine.

Live in the Present

Along with getting control of your breath, focusing on bringing yourself to the present is a great way to tackle your anxieties. When we’re feeling anxious, it’s very likely we aren’t in the present moment, between worrying about a test you’re taking next week to being scared to going on a date, or replaying old failures in your mind, asking “Would that scenario have gone differently?”

Spending too much time in the past can create a lot of pain and longing, while focusing too much on the future can cause you to worry about things that aren’t even guaranteed to happen.

Worrying about the past, or about the future isn’t going to do anything to change them. It can feel impossible to get your mind off of these situations, but the more you can focus being on the present, the easier it will be for you to stay calm.

One of the best ways to focus on the present is to focus on your senses. What are you touching? What do you smell? What do you see in your environment? What sorts of sounds do you hear? If you’re having a hard time staying present, it can help to say what you sense out loud.

Be aware of your anxious thoughts

Anxiety is uncomfortable and no one wants to experience it. However, in order to effectively deal with them, you need to be aware of what is going on. You need to know what sorts of thoughts are racing through your mind before you can address them.

Mindfulness based approaches are incredibly helpful in treating depression and anxiety. In fact, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy has been shown to reduce mental relapse by 50%. This sort of therapy works by helping you become aware of your anxious thoughts rather than trying to fix them. Being able to see your thoughts without immediately reacting to them can take away some of the power that anxiety holds over you. Instead of reacting right away, you can process what’s going on and figure out the best way to deal with the situation.

Being aware of your thoughts is another way to practice mindfulness. Many people might think they have to completely get rid of their thoughts in order to meditate. This practice often isn’t helpful or attainable. Instead, being mindful of your anxiety means observing your thoughts without passing judgement.

There are many ways you can practice being aware of your thoughts. Some people visualize their thoughts as passing clouds and identify them as they go by. Others observe their life as if it were a movie and analyze what is happening instead of reacting right away.

Find Activities You Enjoy

Obsessing over future worries and past mistakes will quickly blow your anxiety out of proportion. Sometimes, despite your best efforts to breathe or be mindful of your anxiety, you can’t get your mind off of it. When this happens, it can be helpful to try to distract yourself from what is happening.

In a 2009 study, 74% of patients reported that knitting helped lessen their anxiety. Those patients found relief from their fears while knitting.

If knitting isn’t your thing, you can try any of the infinite hobbies out there. Find something that relaxes you and gives you a sense of accomplishment. Some people have found that painting and journaling helps them get control over their anxiety, while others find relief in exercise. Do what you love, and watch your anxiety lessen.

Identify the Worst Case Scenario

If you truly feel you cannot get a grip on your anxious thoughts, there is a technique you can use to lessen anxiety’s power over you. Most of that power comes from stressing about the unknown. Anxiety can ask a lot of “what if” questions and not provide any answers.

One therapist has found that focusing on the worst case scenario can actually help patients control their anxieties. Most anxious people think a lot about the worst thing that could happen, but they don’t follow those thoughts all the way through.

For example, a lot of people feel anxiety about giving presentations. The absolute worst thing that could happen in your presentation is that you feel so anxious and embarrassed that you die on the spot. Instead of leaving the thought there, take it further. How likely is it that this situation will happen? It’s probably more or less impossible. Then, other more likely outcomes don’t seem particularly bad when compared to your absolute worst outcome. Having this kind of perspective when it comes to anxiety can help lessen its impact and give you more ability to face potential outcomes.

You don’t have to live in constant worry about when your next anxiety attack will happen. Instead, you can implement some of these strategies to lessen your overall feeling of anxiety and prevent times of panic and fear.

Breathing is a quick and easy way to reduce stress at a moments notice.Your mind and body can benefit in a variety of ways when you start breathing deeply on a regular basis. Learning how to breathe deeply can help lower your blood pressure, increase your cardiovascular strength, reduce anxiety, and boost your overall energy levels.

Most techniques build on the basic definition of deep breathing: in deep breathing, you work to take in more air and exhale more fully. You want your stomach to rise as you take a breath in, and then you want your stomach to deflate to the point of being tucked in as you breathe out.

There are many breathing techniques you can use to improve your health. This article will outline some of the methods you can use, and how to implement them in your daily life.

Counting Your Breath

Counting your breath is probably the most straight forward method of deep breathing. Using a count of breaths gives your mind something to focus on, and makes it less likely that your mind will wander. Read more

If you’ve spent any time researching meditative breathing techniques, you’ll know that there are dozens of methods to choose from. Trying to find a technique that works for you can be overwhelming, and it might scare you away from trying. However, you can narrow it down by searching for breathing methods that help with specific issues.

Many breathing techniques are based on the yogic principle of Pranayama, which is the foundation of all yoga practices. Pranayama translates to extending your life force. Because breathing can help you with so many issues, breathing in a specific way will provide you with a greater quality of life and help you get a better handle on the issues you face every day.

Here is a quick guide to some breathing techniques that help reduce stress, raise energy levels, and help you when you’re having trouble sleeping. Read more

Holidays are a time for you to connect with your family and share gifts with the people you love. However, the pressure of preparing for holiday parties and trying to get gifts that everyone will like can become stressful and create a lot of tension rather than joy.

As a result, many people end up getting tense and holding that stress in their bodies. If you find your skin breaking out more than usual, or feel tired and achey all the time around the holidays, it’s possible that you’re holding too much stress in your body.

When you get stressed, the fight or flight response activates in your body. Your brain floods various body systems with stress hormones to get ready for potential danger. Activating the relaxation response reverses that and brings the stress levels in your body down, slowing down your heart and helping your muscles ease up.

You don’t have to just deal with holding on to that added stress, even if you are short on time. There are many ways to relieve tension in your body so your holidays will be a little less stressful. Some of them only take a few minutes, and some of them take a little longer. Read more

Breathing is a necessary activity that we often leave on auto-pilot. However, if you take control of your breath, you’ll be amazed by what you can accomplish. For instance, you can regulate your state of mind, using measured breathing to take yourself from a fever pitch into a state of calm.

You can even use your breath to “transcend the narrow boundaries of the body ego” into a relaxed and even spiritual high. If that sounds like the stuff of arcane spiritual practices, you might be surprised to find that this was actually the goal of scientists. (Grof, Stanislav. Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research. 2000.) That’s the goal of holotropic breathwork, a breathing technique that falls under the umbrella of transpersonal psychology. Read more

Is your breathing “normal?” We all know that it’s important to be aware of your heart rate, but your respiration rate, or how fast you breathe, is another one of the most important vital signs and can tell you a lot about your health.

Respiration is a special kind of natural impulse. It’s the only automatic function that can be controlled consciously. In order words, breathing is normally completely unconscious, but when willed, it can come under conscious control. You might not realize it, but your breathing has a direct impact on your blood pressure, core temperature, and heart rate. If you take a blood pressure reading taken while breathing rapidly and then another quickly after while breathing slowly and evenly, you will see that fast breathing spikes your blood pressure and heart rate.

Your breath reflects both inner and outer conditions of the human mind and body. It is linked to increases in physical exertion, deep relaxation, fear, and sleep. All of these physical states have distinct breathing patterns associated with them. It is one of the core vitals that medical practitioners document when following the progress of a patient. Your breath is not just a reaction to actions you are taking on the outside – it is a signal of core bodily states.

Understanding your normal respiratory rate and paying attention to your breath are important parts of optimizing your health and wellness.

What is Respiration and How Does It Happen?

If you’re like most people, you might assume it’s just a technical term for “breathing,” but it’s more complex than that. Inhaling and exhaling are only one step in the process of respiration.

Inhalation and exhalation are normally controlled by signalsautomatically sent from a part of your brain. This signal activates muscles around your lungs, telling them to contract or relax. This causes air to be sucked into the body or released. But as we all know, our we can consciously override this part of the brain, and we can get our lungs to breath faster, slower, shallower, or deeper.

Respiration encompasses the whole process of moving oxygen from the outside air to deep in your body’s cells. When you breathe in, air is drawn into your lungs. Your lungs are a series of intricate tunnels and blood vessels which take in the air, cleaning it from macro impurities such as dust. Your lung tunnels are entwined with small blood vessels, where blood cells filter in to come into direct contact with the air that your lungs have just filtered. At this point, your blood cells dump out carbon dioxide, which is a waste product of the body. Then, they absorb fresh oxygen. This process is called “gas exchange.” The blood cells then transport oxygen to cells throughout your body, where the oxygen is used as fuel to power your metabolism.

Interestingly, your lungs don’t fill completely with fresh air every time you take a breath. You only take in about 11 ounces of fresh air per breath, which is diluted with much larger store air sitting in your lungs. This ensures that the blood is getting a consistent amount of oxygen, even if you temporarily get short of breath.

Unfortunately, longer disruptions to your normal respiration rate can upset the equalizing and stabilizing effect of this supply. When your breath pattern drastically changes, either going too fast or too slow, your blood cells will start receiving an inadequate supply of oxygen. They may also cease to be able to properly unload carbon dioxide.

If this unbalance persists, your physical wellness may be adversely affected. What breathing rate should keep you in a healthy spot?

What Does Normal Respiration Look Like?

Chances are you’ve never given much thought to how quickly you breathe. You may not even know how to measure it, or how to tell if your breathing rate falls into the normal range. But measuring your breathing rate is fast and easy – here’s how.

First, sit down in a quiet space where you’ll be uninterrupted for a few moments. Place your hand gently over your chest and focus on its rising and falling motion. Focus. Set a timer for one minute.

Count the number of times your chest rises over the course of one full minute. It’s often better to have someone else do your counting for you, since observing your own breath causes many people to breathe more slowly and deeply, giving an inaccurate result.

When you’ve recorded your breath rate, how do you know if it’s ‘normal’?

What’s normal varies heavily depending on your age, health, and recent activity. At rest, infants below six months might take in as many as 30-60 breaths per minute. At age six to twelve months, this drops to 24-30 breaths per minute. From age one to five years, this doesn’t change much, with children taking between 20-30 breaths each minute.

From age six to twelve years, your breathing rate drops dramatically: down to 12-20 breaths per minute is normal for the ages of 6 to 12. After age 12, most adults continue breath within this range, although 12-18 breaths per minuteis preferable. A resting respiratory rate within range is generally considered to be the an accurate measure of a person’s health. For an otherwise healthy person, respiration rates at the lower end of the range is considered best at any age.

What Factors Affect Your Respiration Rate?

If your respiration rate is significantly higher than outlined in the previous section, it’s important to consider the possible reasons why, and take steps to address your fast breathing rate. This may include seeing a medical professional.

The first thing you should examine is your recent activity levels. During and immediately after exercise, a healthy adult may take between 35-45 breaths per minute, and some endurance sports athletes can average even higher, at 60-70. If you’ve just climbed a flight of stairs or engaged in any other physical activity, wait a few minutes before trying to calculate your respiration rate.

Other factors that can alter your respiratory rate include your general physical health. Certain illnesses can increase your breathing rate. For example,research has shown that fevers can affect a person’s respiration rate. Other respiratory afflictions, such as asthma or allergies, may cause your breathing rate to be slightly off. If you’ve got a physical block in your breath pathways, such as a stuffy nose, your breath may be disturbed. None of these are necessarily indicative of serious, underlying issues.

However, a higher breathing rate can signal a strained inner state. Rapid breathing is asymptom of anxiety and stress. This is most apparent during acute episodes of anxiety disorder, which are called panic attacks. During panic attacks, the person affected will hyperventilate heavily, to the point that they become dizzy or disoriented. This is an extreme condition, but chronic milder anxiety can cause modifications to a person’s breath rate as well.

Yourbreathing rate is even affected by smaller changes in your state of mind. Everyday stress and excitement, as well as periods of calm and restfulness, will be reflected in your rate of respiration. Your respiration rate is a sensitive thing.

How does your respiration rate work into your overall wellness?

The Risks of a Fast Respiration Rate

Breathing too quickly can be indicative of an underlying problem. This might be an illness, stress, or perhaps just poor fitness if you’re huffing and puffing up the stairs. However, having a faster breathing rate can negatively affect your wellness independently. As we discussed earlier, your breathing impacts your other main vital signs. Your normal pulse rate will be higher than necessary, and it can cause hypertension, or high blood pressure. These circulatory issues can lead to heart disease or heart attacks if they go unchecked for long periods of time.

Breathing too quickly doesn’t permit your body time to send oxygen to your blood cells properly. In the extreme, this can cause discomfort, including dizziness, muscle spasms, and tingling in your arms and legs. You may even feel faint or experience chest pain. It may also shift your normal body temperature, which comes with its own risks for other medical conditions.

Even if you only have a mild case of hyperventilation, a fast respiration rate can cause difficulty concentrating or thinking. Over time the lack of oxygen can leave you feeling exhausted and can worsen your feelings of stress – which can, in turn, cause health complications down the line.

How To Achieve a Healthy and Normal Respiration Rate

As with any potentially serious medical issue, you should check with a healthcare provider before moving forward with any major life changes. If you find that you’re habitually breathing too quickly, there are things you can do to slow your respiration rate down to a normal level.Breathing exercises, meditation, yoga, and a variety of other practices can train you to breathe more deeply and slowly.

Using Spire can help you become more aware of your breath throughout the day. There may be times when anxiety is mounting and your breath is increasing in speed. Because you are busy or distracted, you may not be able to notice these changes. If you aren’t able to notice your increased breath rate, you won’t be able to take steps to calm yourself down or do breathing exercises to help settle back into a healthy rhythm. Spire accurately tracks your breath, giving you real-time feedback on your breathing, helping you understand when it’s time to take a pause to take care of your breath.

Respiration rate is one of the most basic functions of the human body, but it is far more complex and meaningful that most of us realize. With a little practice and a mindful approach, it’s possible to bring your breathing to a healthy rate and live a more relaxed, calmer, healthier life.

Luckily, you can start your practice with the helpful guidance of world-renowned meditation leader Deepak Chopra and his Chopra Center. You may know Deepak as Oprah Winfrey’s close spiritual friend, but he’s even better known for his wisdom, inspiring outlook on life, and his pursuit of perfect health and inner peace.

Deepak believes that meditation can take you beyond “the mind’s noisy chatter into the pure awareness that is the source of all your happiness, inspiration, and love.”

Start With Your Breath

Meditation is a form of mindfulness, and just like mindfulness, it helps to start getting focused by bringing attention to your breath.

In the following meditation, Deepak Chopra guides you in breath awareness. This simple meditation is a great place to start and an easy way to quickly manage stress.

Quiet Your Mind

Try this meditation after you’ve done a few of the basic breath awareness exercises, and are ready for a real meditation experience.

Carve out some time during your day and get into a comfortable position to start. When you’re ready, play this guided meditation to quiet the stressful “noises” of your mind.

Meditate With Intention

Meditation is a great tool for not just stress; it’s a great way to help you focus your mind. This is a great morning meditation – Deepak Chopra starts his day out with a two hour meditation that allow him to set intentions for his day. In the following meditation, he shares his four favorite intentions to repeat during meditation.

Meditation for Sleep

Since meditation helps quiet the mind, it makes sense for it to help with easing the mind into a restful state – ready for deep sleep.

Let Deepak Chopra guide you into dreamland with this meditation for sleep.

Meditation in Everyday Activities

Meditation can help bring certain focus, enlightenment, and clarity to other aspects of your life as well.

For example, if you’re feeling low on energy, it’s good to take a break. Why not take a break with Deepak and refresh your energy with the following meditation? It focuses on maximizing energy to be your most productive self.

Now think about the relationships in your life. Could you use clarity or focus there?

This meditation could help. In the following guided practice, Deepak Chopra calls for you to open your heart to let the joy in and to bring more empathy to your relationships for better understanding on both sides.

Deepak Chopra inspires many because he firmly believes that each person deserves a more fulfilling and joyful life. You can find more meditations as well as participate in the meditation challenge at chopracentermeditation.com.

Now, that you have access to a few of his guided meditations, make time for them during your day. Spire can help by giving you a gentle reminder to break away from the stresses of daily life and spend some time on yourself.

In the face of so much stress, many are looking for anything that will help them calm down and become more healthy in today’s world. One of the best ways to do exactly that is to regularly practice deep breathing. However, many people are reluctant to try it, because it seems too simple. How can something as natural as breathing make such a big difference?

Most people breathe from their chest instead of from their diaphragm. This results in shallow breathing that taxes the body and doesn’t give it the amount of oxygen necessary to keep everything running at optimal function.

Retraining yourself to breathe deeply can improve your health in a number of ways. Here are some of the aspects of your life that can be strengthened by learning to breathe properly.

Deep breathing works to calm anxiety through a small group of neurons that is responsible for communicating respiratory information to other parts of your brain. These nerve cells connect breathing to states of being, such as anxiety, excitement, and relaxation. They are responsible for different types of breath, from shallow to gasping. It’s believed that this group of 3,000 cells is responsible for the calming effect seen during meditation.

Those who do not see immediate relief in anxiety after some deep breaths may have some genetic issues with the way these cells are set up. In some cases, these individuals may have to turn to medication to activate these cells properly. Other times, they only require more deep breaths than the average person in order to achieve the same result.

Deep Breathing is a Natural Pain Killer

When you’re stressed out or anxious, it’s easy to keep tension in various parts of your body. However, if you are tense for too long, it can lead to muscle aches all over. In fact, carrying around too much tension in the body is one of the most common causes of mild muscle pain.

There are many other reasons you could be experiencing pain. Other causes of body aches include too much physical activity, autoimmune disorder, thyroid issues, and suffering from the flu or the common cold.

Instead of turning to pain killer drugs, or just trying to push through it, there is another alternative. Deep breathing is a natural pain killer and can decrease the amount of pain you’re feeling. This is because breathing deeply releases endorphins in your brain. Endorphins have inflammation fighting capabilities, and can decrease the amount of pain felt from inflamed parts of the body.

Endorphins like dopamine are also responsible for helping you feel happy in relation to your actions. The autonomic nervous system and dopamine are connected, so when you breath deeply, you activate the parasympathetic side of the autonomic nervous system, which in turn releases dopamine into your brain.

Deep breathing is a great way to prevent stress from taking over your life. Instead of just binge watching the latest Netflix series, engaging in deep breathing is a great way to activate your body’s relaxation response.

Breathing from your belly increases your body’s oxygen supply and tells the parasympathetic nervous system to kick in. This system takes you from the frenzied state of worry about money and health to a more focused, present state of your body.

Deep breathing is also a great way to calm the emotional turbulence that comes from getting caught up in the stresses of life. Focusing on your breath forces you to be present in your body, which takes your mind off of the dozens of things that stress you out from day to day.

Deep Breathing Promotes Better Blood Flow

Blood flow isn’t something we can consciously control. The brain manages many systems in the body without direct input, including the nervous system, digestion, and keeping your heart beating.

Deep Breathing Makes You More Mindful of Your Body

Most people are used to breathing from their chest. When you’re not thinking about it, it’s easier to take more shallow breaths.

Making an effort to switch to diaphragmatic breathing requires you to focus on your breath. This focus will bring parts of your body to your attention that you’ve probably never noticed before. You’ll become more aware of what’s going on in your body, which takes your mind away from the stresses of life.

As you are breathing, you’ll become more aware of the expansions and contractions of your abdomen. It might feel weird at first, but focusing on the experience can help you become more aware of your body and what is going on inside of it.

The demands of life make it difficult to take a moment and reflect on what is going on inside of us. Learning how to breathe deeply forces you to pause. Even just a single deep breath can make a small change in how you perceive what is going on.

Being more mindful of your body makes it easier to become more aware of the emotions inside of you, which makes it possible for you to deal with situations that were once too stressful to think about.

If you’re new to deep breathing, remembering to do it on a regular basis can be tricky. Especially if you are caught up in the moment, taking a step back to breath might be the last thing on your mind.

Spire can help you take a deep breath when life gets too challenging. The combined activity and breathing sensors keep track of the speed of your breath. By paying attention to the rise and fall of your torso, Spire can identify times of stress and panic. During those times, Spire will send a notification to your phone to take a deep breath and will offer a short breathing exercise for you to do.

This takes the pressure off of you, making it possible for you to enjoy the benefits of deep breathing without giving you one more thing to put on your to do list.

Many of us suffer from poor sleep habits that drain our energy and make us feel sluggish. You may have heard that yoga is an excellent tool to help you achieve a state of relaxation, but did you know that yoga can also help you sleep better? Aside from improving your flexibility and strength, yoga can aid even the most desperately sleepless night owls get some quality rest.

Why Yoga?

TheAmerican Sleep Association reports that 50-70 million US adults have a sleep disorder, with close to 40% of US adults falling asleep during the day. Signs that you are sleep deprived include feeling tired during the day, experiencing brain fog at work, or needing to reach for caffeine to stay awake. Then, at the end of the day, the stress and anxiety make it difficult to fall asleep. Read more

You might be surprised to learn this, but when it comes to breathing, there are dozens of distinct techniques you can use. While breathing is something you do automatically, using specific breathing methods can help reduce anxiety and stress in several situations.

This article will take an in-depth look at diaphragmatic breathing. In this post, you can expect information on what it is, how it will help, and how you can implement it in your life.